Musical Interlude For Autumn

(With a hat tip to Pastorius of Infidel Bloggers Alliance)

Enjoy the following contemplative work, especially appropriate during the fall foliage season here in the Northeast:


About the composer, Alan Hovhaness:

Alan Hovhaness (Armenian: Ալան Յովհաննէս) (March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an Armenian-American composer.

His music is accessible to the lay listener and often evokes a mood of mystery or contemplation. The Boston Globe music critic Richard Buell wrote: "Although he has been stereotyped as a self-consciously Armenian composer (rather as Ernest Bloch is seen as a Jewish composer), his output assimilates the music of many cultures. What may be most American about all of it is the way it turns its materials into a kind of exoticism. The atmosphere is hushed, reverential, mystical, nostalgic."

He was among the most prolific of 20th century composers, his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies (surviving manuscripts indicate over 70) and 434 opus numbers. However, the true tally is well over 500 surviving works since many opus numbers comprise two or more distinct works....

More at the above link.

According to YouTube:

The quartet also bears the subtitle 'Under the Ancient Maple Tree'. Hovhaness remaraked about this quartet: There grew a "Marvelous tree on my uncle's farm in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, where I had many happy times. From under its branches were spectacular views in every direction. Later, lightning struck the tree and destroyed it. This piece is my memorial to that beautiful tree."

When I grew up, my favorite trees were the two weeping willows in our front yard of one-half acre. Dad planted those trees when I was four years old, and because of the low terrain at the bottom of our front yard, the weeping willows thrived and grew to at least forty feet by the time I was in junior high school. Hours upon hours, I sat in or under those branches and read novels. I cried when the property was developed and those weeping willows destroyed.